When We Were Boys

When We Were Boys (Director: Sarah Goodman): I was a big fan of Sarah Goodman’s first film Army of One (review) which premiered at Hot Docs in 2004 and so when I saw she had another film at Hot Docs, I was eager to see it. Unfortunately, it’s taken me sev­eral weeks longer than anti­cip­ated to finally sit down and watch it.

When We Were Boys is a vérité por­trait of a private boys’ school here in Toronto, and it par­tic­u­larly focuses on the friend­ship between two boys. Noah is sens­itive and polite, a good stu­dent and a standout in the choir. Colin is louder, more ram­bunc­tious, able to charm his teachers into let­ting him get away with things. We pick up the story in Grade 8, with the boys razzing each other while playing video­games. As Goodman’s camera fol­lows them over the next year, we become immersed in the barely-controlled chaos that is school. Despite the boys’ priv­ilege, they are just as ener­getic and rest­less as any other kids at that age. Many of them try to manip­u­late and charm their teachers, which although it hap­pens else­where, seems par­tic­u­larly men­acing given that within ten years, most of these kids will make more money than their teachers ever will. It’s hard to determine whether their sense of enti­tle­ment is just part of their gen­er­a­tion or whether it has any­thing to do with their fam­ilies’ wealth. Goodman begins the film with a long shot of the pro­ces­sion of expensive cars that drop their sons off each morning, and it very clearly makes the point that these boys are spe­cial. Their teachers drive the point home repeatedly as well, that they have great respons­ib­il­ities to go with their priv­ilege, but of course the mes­sage is lost on 13-year-old boys.

As the film fol­lows the boys into Grade 9, some of the minor char­ac­ters drop into the back­ground even fur­ther as it becomes apparent that Noah is being ostra­cized for some reason. It’s never clear exactly why he’s no longer pop­ular, although it could have some­thing to do with the fact that other stu­dents seem to think his family is wealthier than the rest of them. Noah takes it stoic­ally, but some of the shots of him sit­ting alone at lunch or walking home are heart­breaking. His rejec­tion by Colin is espe­cially painful to watch.

But then sud­denly, the film skips another year into the future, and Noah and Colin are back in Noah’s base­ment playing video­games together. Noah tent­at­ively asks Colin what happened, but doesn’t get an answer. That’s sort of the pos­i­tion the viewer is put in, as well. Goodman has beau­ti­fully cap­tured the energy and shifting alle­gi­ances of boys at this age, but there’s very little sense of the boys’ inner lives. By picking boys rather than girls, she’s staked out par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult ter­rain. Boys hardly talk to anyone about what’s going on in their heads at this age, never mind doc­u­mentary film­makers. So all we can see is their out­ward beha­viour, which is guarded and superficial.

The end result is that the viewer is left to pro­ject his own remem­brances of adoles­cence onto the boys. The soundtrack almost encour­ages this, helping the film feel nos­talgic even as events are hap­pening. Ultimately, though, that didn’t feel sat­is­fying to me. Noah seems like a very inter­esting char­acter, and there is one scene where he talks some­what freely to his barber about the expect­a­tions being put on him, but for me that was almost a tease. I sup­pose that wanting to know things the boys them­selves may not know is put­ting unreal­istic expect­a­tions on the film, but I can’t deny that I am still left wanting some­thing more.

Official site of the film

(7/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs09, adolescence